4.3 billion transistors, a 28nm manufacturing process, 2048 cores, a 384-bit memory bus and 3GB of GDDR5 memory; the new AMD HD 7970 has it all. Based off of the new Southern Islands architecture it represents a leap forward for AMD's core engineering and is designed from the ground up for DX11 a compute performance. While its specifications page may read like a gamer's wishlist, the HD 7970 has some big expectations to live up to and some heavy competition to beat.